Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/417

 ii s. XIL NOV. 20, i9io.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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supervised by the tutor (= trustee) of the family, which accounts for the failures in the building, for he was better acquainted with the Latin of the second or third century than with bricks and mortar. The kitchen under the hall, a cave cut out of the rock, is now closed up, with a well inside. The hall or rooms may have been changed since, anyhow the mantelpiece is just above the Idtchen.

The masons employed may have come from the sea-coast and brought with them the idea and habit of smoking, which Sir Walter Raleigh had introduced about the end of the sixteenth century, and thus comically it handed down to posterity.

But how are we to account for the shape of the pipe, viz., a dudeen, clearly shown in Donnelly's ' Atlantis,' p. 63 ? But that is another story.

J. L. LAMBTON, Lieut. -Col.

Brownslade.

REFERENCE MARKS (US. xi. 471). I have received from Mr. Robert Bagster, F.S.A., in reply to my inquiries, a letter which he kindly allows me to make public, and which gives all the information now available with respect to the question I raised at the above reference. Mr. Bagster writes as follows :

"Our edition of the Septuagint, with an English translation, was published in 1870, and long before that we had adopted in our Bibles the use of the English alphabet (italic) for verse references, and of the Greek alphabet for ' various reading ' refer- ences. The plan started about 1806, when my grandfather first began setting up a Reference Bible.

"There is no doubt that the Greek vowels were loft out because they would be confused with the English letters when both alphabets were used in the same column'; and knowing the traditions of my house, and the schemes that were adopted to ensure clearness in this new venture of a small Reference Bible, I have no doubt that the Kappa and Nu were also left out because of their likeness to the English letters k and v. I send you a page of a Bible to show how the plan is worked at the p-e- sent day. You will notice that both Kappa and Nu have been restored to their places in the Greek alphabet, and that Eta has also been added as not likely to be mistaken for anything else. In fact, the plan is quite arbitrary, and I should say was evolved by my forbears as occasion de- manded."

I may add that the specimen page sent by Mr. Bagster shows that, formerly included, is now omitted. F. W. READ.

"A STRICKEN FIELD" (11 S. xii. 379). The origin of this expression was discussed in The Daily Telegraph shortly after the late Lord Salisbury's use of it in his speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet in 1898. One

writer alluded to its figuring both in Fir Walter Scott's and Lord Macaulay's works ; but another, Mr. Walter B. Kingsford, ob- served that

" to strike a battle, in the sense of to fight, was an expression employed not unfrequently in very early Scottish writers " ;

and he cited the following examples : That John gat Edwarde That come intil Scotland syne And strak the battaile of Duplyne.

Wyntown, viii. 6, 278

"The battle was stricken in the year of God 1445." Pitscottie. ed. 1768, p. 38.

"The field was stryken at Langside." Ander- son's 'Coll.,' ii. 277.

The' phrase tallies almost exactly with the old German form, " Eine Schlacht zu schlagen." WILLOUGHBY MAYCOCK.

SKULL AND IRON NAIL (US. xii. 181, 300, 389). I do not think L. L. K. has examined the thickness of the bone of the skull in the region of the temple or the medical litera- ture of accidental injuries to the skull. Serious and fatal injuries have been caused by wooden pegs accidentally penetrating the bones of the skull. If L. L. K. will try, he will find it would not be at all out of the question to drive a wooden nail through the skull in the region of the temple. M.D.

"HOMO BULLA" (11 S. xii. 85, 145, 210). The replies by S. G. and PROF. BENSLY (ante, p. 145), suggesting that the motto " Homo Bulla " in pictures of St. Jerome at work imply that " Man is a bubble," scarcely seem to explain what is apparently an allusion of special application. Cannot it refer to the Papal Bull (bulla) whereby the saint was constrained, against his wish and taste, to translate the Holy Scriptures ?

M. H. S.

" I DON'T THINK " (11 S. xii. 321, 370). This is also to be found in chap. vi. of ' Martin Chuzzlewit,' where Tom Pinch quotes it as a saying of John Westlock : " 'I'm a nice man, I don't think,' as John used to say (John was a kind, merry -hearted fellow)." It would be curious to know where Dickens derived this strange expression.

H. PENROSE PRANCE.

" LIENIN " (11 S. xii. 321, 364). I was inclined to suggest, as MR. WM. DOUGLAS has done, that " lienin " and " laystall '" are synonymous, until I consulted a dic- tionary and found that a " laystall " was a dunghill, or, as another puts it, a refuse- heap. ST, SWITHIN.